100k for IMF/WB

[Ian Murray]

D.C. Police Brace for Next Month's IMF Protests


By Arthur Santana
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 17, 2001; 1:07 PM


D.C. police are bracing for as many as 100,000 protesters at next
month's World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings, Police
Chief Charles H. Ramsey said this morning, doubling the city's
previous estimates of demonstrators.

Speaking at a morning briefing, Ramsey said that a turnout of 100,000
would dwarf the 20,000 protesters who crowded the city for similar
meetings here in April 2000. As many as 100,000 protesters gathered at
World Bank meetings in Genoa, Italy, last month at which a protester
was killed.

The city also released the text of a letter written by Mayor Anthony
A. Williams to President Bush earlier this month.

"Intelligence information indicates that the protests and
demonstrations surrounding this IMF/World Bank meeting will be of an
intensity, scope and magnitude that we have never seen in this city,"
Williams wrote in the Aug. 6 letter. He went on to add that the city
needs a commitment from the federal government so that police and
other city agencies can make arrangements to bring in extra police
from other cities.

"If the resources cannot be identified in very short order, the
agencies will not be able to protect our city and insure the integrity
of the meetings," Williams wrote to Bush.

That theme was continued this morning by Deputy Mayor Margret
Nedelkoff Kellems who said that negotiating with the federal
government for $30 million in assistance has been "a long, tedious
process." But Kellems, pointing out that District taxpayers should not
bear the brunt of paying for what is a federal event added that the
federal government "recognizes their responsibility."

Protesters, who have gathered at previous World Bank/IMF meetings in
Seattle and Quebec as well as here and in Genoa, want to draw
attention to problems of globalization, which they see as benefiting
rich nations at the expense of poor nations.

Today's briefing came on the heels of the police department's decision
to cordon off the White House from protesters by constructing a nine
foot fence. The steel hurricane fencing set in Jersey barriers would
cost about $1.8 million, Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W.
Gainer said yesterday.